


tabula rasa

by kangeiko



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Attempted Rape, Canon Compliant, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-26
Updated: 2006-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple of summers ago, Claire went through a Stephen King phase.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tabula rasa

  
_A couple of summers ago, Claire went through this Stephen King phase. It wasn't even that she liked horror that much, but there was this cool new movie that everyone apart from her was allowed to see, apparently, so she made do with the local library and Carrie. That wasn't bad, so she had a look at his other stuff, and gradually worked her way through the thin ones, steering well clear of stuff like The Stand, which seemed more like a doorstep than a book. When she ran out of novels, she had a look at the short stories. One was about a guy waking up on an autopsy table. _

*

Her brain was screaming at her that she should be in pain. She'd broken every bone in her body, and it hadn't had any trouble coping, but, then, she hadn't had to actually _see_ it happen. Here, all she could see were her insides, spread out like a butterfly's wings. _All I need are the pins,_ she thought, and with careful, steady hands smoothed her skin back down. _pain!_ her brain screamed, confused. This wasn't something that it could cope with.

Claire picked up the hysteria and very carefully put it in a little box. She'd examine it later, when she wasn't in pieces on an autopsy table.

(this isn't something I should be able to process)

She'd never been inside a morgue before.

(oh, but she'd imagined that it would be _just like this_)

She wondered what would have happened if they had just buried her, school ground to satin-lined coffin with no cold metal slab in between

(a few years later, when the wood in her skull had come free, she'd wake up with six feet of earth above her and scream to her heart's content)

*

She got home and got in the shower. Someone had washed her already - she could smell hospital soap, like sulphur - and the thought made her a little nauseous. Probably the nice lady who had been ready to remove her innards and put them in little pickle jars on her desk.

She scrubbed herself raw, and smoothed cocoa butter over her skin again and again, until she smelled more like herself.

She put the tub of body butter back on the bathroom shelf. She saw herself in the mirror.

(no marks at all, even where he -)

It suddenly occurred to her that he could have -

(no, don't be stupid, he wouldn't with a _dead girl_, right?)

(right?)

She threw up.

*

_Claire did not sleep well that night. The following morning, she took the book back to the library and went to the mall instead. Horror books were for geeks and losers, anyway._

*

fin


End file.
